So What's New With Alice in Wonderland?

Alice in Wonderland, wasn't part of my childhood. Steeped in harsh reality, I think I was privileged to have heard from my elementary teachers the tales of The Monkey and the Turtle, and Rizal's Moth Story. They were the strongest builders of some of my early "moral values" which the Duchess in Alice's tale so desperately tried to extract from even amoral situations. (Anyway, a moral value was probably unintentional in all fairy tales even if almost all of them are stories of good versus evil on a grand and magical scale.) Meanwhile, I learned about Little Red Riding Hood and other Brother Grimm's stories from a book I copied when my youngest sister Joy was in kindergarten. Since she did not have a story book (and we did not have money to buy one), I borrowed a book of depressing fairy tales (although I didn't know then that they were dark stories) and traced all the pictures, colored them as they appeared to me from the book, copied all texts exactly where I found them under the pictures, and bound the copied pages using a local glue (or my mother might have stitched those pages, I can't remember now). Yes, that seemed to have foreshadowed my career in publishing, my first venture into re-publishing an imported title. With that, I also had my very first glimpse of fairy-tales, although they happened to be the grim ones.

And still, I did not meet Alice (or Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz) until College. In High School, I don't remember meeting those characters in any of my subjects in public school. Instead, I had a full appreciation of the heroes and heroines of Ibong Adarna, Florante at Laura, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. When I took up English as my major, that was the time I encountered Lewis Caroll, but I became familiar only with the title of his famous work - Alice Adventures in Wonderland - but I had no idea what Alice was up to, until I graduated. Today, although "curiouser and curiouser" I still don't have any idea what Alice is up to, even after watching Repertory's interpretation of a Musical based on this classic.

What's with the Rabbit? What's with the Hatter? What's with the Duchess? What's with the Queen of Hearts? What's with the Mouse? What's with all these walruses and oysters and turtles and fowls and crawling creatures such as the caterpillar? (I love them all here since they were all singing and dancing expertly and joyfully in their origami inspired costumes.) Why are they in Alice's Wonderland?

Since a lot has been read into this tale and many interpretations and re-interpretations have gone by, I won't attempt to add or subtract to the lot. But I want to say that as I watched this Repertory musical, I have met Alice anew, and in her Wonderland of a dream, I realized that everything is a premise, a "what if". Each surreal encounter is a preen into something out there, without a follow through. Each encounter has no beginning, no ending, no rule, no object lesson; each character is not a hero, nor a villain. It is this ambiguity, this ambivalence that makes Alice in Wonderland wonderfully always new. Indeed the premises have led to other fictions since Lewis Caroll asked them (or asked the question back to answer a question). Alice's dream introduced me anew to the "what-ifs". [Who knows what fiction will stream forth in my subconscious.] In the meantime, the ambient stage with its spectacular lighting and effective blackouts allowed me to slumber with Alice under that tree, then fall down into that rabbit hole, and then wander through Wonderland.

My nephew watched it wondering how all those scenes in the book he read as a child would be played out on stage. He was particularly concerned that Alice should grow small, then tall, then regular again. And how was this going to happen? Happily, Repertory has made sure that Alice would sing and dance in all the magical places my nephew had imagined. He saw firsthand how Alice fell down the rabbit hole, went through a tiny door, and then through a large door, growing small, then tall, then regular again. He could smell the pepper in the duchess hands as she riddled Alice. A biology student, he even classified the green and round caterpillar that had "perfectly snychronized legs". He laughed out loud at the French mouse and got completely lost listening to the green turtle's meaningless tale. He identified himself with the unreasonably stressed-out rabbit, what with all his final exams looming over his head. He was glad that nothing was missed, that Alice got to listen to a hatter's mad litany, attend a silly tea party, and confront a very Red and fiery Queen of a pack of cards -- all within a two-hour unforgettable experience.

We both watched the happy little ones in the audience. For them, this will be one good memory to recall. Adults would still probably think twice before watching another entertaining fairy tale. But this children's story, in any format, always stimulates, and has not at all faded away in time. Right now, I'm thinking of a follow through to a Wonderland premise: What if Alice didn't find her way back from the rabbit hole? What if Wonderland was the real land and the reality side of sleep is the dream? What if?